Having already angered older voters with their controversial changes to winter fuel payments last autumn, Labour has now achieved a generational symmetry by angering younger voters with its subsequent U-turn. Rachel Reeves has today announced that more than three quarters of pensioners will receive the winter fuel payment this year. It means any individual with an annual income of £35,000 or below will now be eligible. That’s nine million people in total.
The political rationale behind this screeching U-turn is obvious. The cuts to winter fuel payments quickly became this government’s most unpopular policy. Many Labour activists reported it being the most commonly cited concern on the doorstep while campaigning for the recent local elections. Plus, with Nigel Farage pledging to restore the benefit – in full – to all pensioners, Downing Street was sensitive to being outflanked on its left by Reform.
But let’s not delude ourselves. One can argue Labour went too far last autumn by restricting the payments to all but the poorest of pensioners, but the principle behind the cuts was fair. Most retirees are perfectly capable of paying for their own energy bills without state support, and it is immoral to waste taxpayers’ money on those who don’t need it.
The winter fuel payment is worth up to £300 a year. A pensioner couple with a household income of almost £70,000 can receive it. It is impossible to justify, especially given no such support is available for working-age families with much lower household incomes, higher housing costs, and eye-watering childcare bills.
The resentment this is storing up among younger voters should not be under-estimated. Morgan McSweeney seems to imagine Labour’s core voter is a Reform-flirting, blue collar worker in the post-industrial north. In reality, the party’s new voter base is largely made up of working-age families in the UK’s biggest towns and cities, whose living standards have fallen far behind those of their parents. The idea that these people will carry on voting for Labour if it prioritises relatively wealthy pensioners over them is dangerously complacent.
Pensioners are being unfairly prioritised over those in far greater need
And the Tories are no better. The fact that Rishi Sunak seriously campaigned on introducing a ‘triple-lock plus’ at the last election (incorporating pensioners’ personal allowance into the guarantee) was a sign of his sheer desperation. It was the most transparent of electoral bribes from a party that should know better than to transform the state pension into a Ponzi scheme.
From winter fuel payments to the triple lock, pensioners are being unfairly prioritised over those in far greater need. In 2011, the basic state pension was £102.15 a week. As of April this year, the full new state pension is £230.25 per week. That is an 125 per cent increase over a 14 year-period. One in four pensioners is now officially a millionaire – thanks largely to their property assets – and yet many of these will still be eligible for state support on their energy bills.
The triple lock alone is costing the Treasury around ten billion each year and it’s being paid for by borrowing: the budget deficit is estimated to have been £148.3bn in 2024/25. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility’s own forecast, the UK’s national debt will exceed 270 per cent of GDP by 2070. Today’s pensioners won’t be around by then, but with any luck, I will. I’d rather not spend my dying days paying back the cost of the electoral bribes being showered over today’s retirees.
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